Room for rent! No laundry, parking space, or shower, home has 5 other tenants. 2000 a month plus utilities, credit check, references, DNA blood sample, and tarot card reading required, serious inquiries only!
If you have had to partake in the Ontario rental market anytime in the past year or so you may have seen a posting similar to this. Maybe the one above is a little exaggerated, but spiritually it is the same. Landlords now consider 100 sq. ft. with a bathroom and a hotplate to be a 1000 dollar living space, plus utilities, and a 50 dollar surcharge for parking. If you want a space suitable for 2 people you aren’t gonna find anything below 1500 a month.
Honestly, it can feel quite powerless and demeaning standing in a small shitty apartment with a landlord who knows you don’t have any other options. They sit there and relish in the fact that they can charge whatever they want because they have 30 other desperate motherfuckers waiting outside. It's out of your budget, but what are you supposed to do? Find another place? There isn’t any. Not rent it? Well, how are you going to get to your new job? So you just have to kiss the ass of the landlord who probably look like one of these scum.
(Scum landlords.)
For those dwellers in major cities the prices I have discussed are only shocking because of how cheap they are. But when these prices started popping up in small “cities” in rural Ontario where public services, general amenities, economic activity and career opportunities are much lower it made many of us shiver.
In 2022 rent rose by 31% in Ontario with bachelor apartments experiencing the highest increase. Some thought that this was a tipping point, especially with the housing market cooling down in the past year or so. On top of this Ontario implemented a rent increase cap of 2.5%, which would be 25 dollars for a 1000 dollar apartment. Despite these factors rent continued to increase in Ontario, which is honestly not that surprising and it certainly should not have been for government officials. Rent increases were not allowed during the pandemic and were restricted to 1.5% in 2022, rent still rose, so what did they expect?
Well, I doubt Doug Ford and all of his cronies actually expected the 2.5% restriction to help Ontarians. Part of the reason this 2.5% increase is useless is because there are a trillion exemptions to it. If the unit was first occupied after November 2018 this rule does not apply, and landlords can simply put in an application to the Landlord and Tenant board to raise the rent above this 2.5% level if occupied before 2018. Even if the increase is limited to 50 dollars it doesn’t seem like that much until you realize that gas, groceries, and general amenities have also gone up, suddenly your monthly expenses went from 2000 dollars to 2400, and you go oh shit, I only make 2400.
If you can afford a 2.5% increase in rent don’t you worry because your landlord can easily push that up beyond 2.5%. What may entail the board approving a rental increase request above 2.5%? Well if the landlord has had to undergo significant capital expenses such as renovations, repairs, replacements to the unit or the landlord has experienced operating costs related to security services. Among the other reasons for a rent raise above 2.5% is a change in municipal taxes. Basically anything that involves being an actual landlord permits an increase above 2.5%. So, basically anything that a landlord is supposed to do, and is paid to do by renters, can be a justification for further rent increases.
If you unit was first occupied past 2018 then good luck. Just look at this story where 2 elderly ladies are facing a 200 dollar increase in rent. An increase that has this elderly lady fearing she may not be able to afford her rent and says it has had a negative effect on her health. This increase in rent was justified simply by inflation.
The exemption that allowed this rent increase was put in place to encourage the construction of new rental properties in Ontario. Which the government states is “paying off for Ontarians”.
(Cindy McMurray, one of the ladies who is facing a 200 dollar increase in rent)
Now imagine just walking up to this sweet elderly lady and saying, “Well yeah I know that this increase in rent may make you homeless, and it's happening because of an exception we put in, but it is really paying off for Ontarians!”, ludicrous really.
If landlords have this right to increase your rent (simply because they had to take care of the building, a landlord's only job) then tenants must have some rights in regards to fighting back right?
If a tenant such as Cindy wanted to dispute this increase in rent they would have to submit a claim to the board within 12 months, a claim that may take up to 9 months to be processed and have a hearing set up for. Not only do you have to go through the bureaucratic processes of filing this claim on your own time, but you then have to take a day off to appear in court or your case will be dismissed. But don’t worry, the board will make sure that a landlord’s request for eviction will be processed as soon as possible!
The relationship between landlords and tenants is clearly a unequal one. One side has the power to make the other homeless whilst wielding a mountain of resources to use. While the other side has limited resources if any, has very little knowledge of rental laws (because who the fuck does honestly), and of course has a full time job that prevents them from doing hours of research to know whether or not their landlord is fucking them or not (metaphorically of course).
Unfortunately the problem with unaffordable rental pricing goes beyond scummy, money hungry landlords, is that scummy money hungry politicians and development companies are part of the problem too, as per usual.
(Doug Ford, doing something useless)
Housing shortages is no new problem for those in Ontario, house prices have gone up 400% since the 1990’s while wages have essentially stayed the same. As the price of houses have gone up, so have the prices of renting any type of living space. It is difficult to get a solid number on average rental prices in Ontario due to the assortment of living spaces (legal and illegal). But for legal apartment/condominium living spaces the average cost is currently at 2300 dollars in Ontario, a completely ludicrous price.
Many, including the government of Ontario say that a lack of housing is the cause of the housing crisis we are seeing. In their eyes the solution to this untenable market is to build more homes and have the market adjust itself. Love that their response to a crisis is to let the same forces who caused this crisis to keep operating, but with less restrictions this time.
Overall, it is a multitude of factors that have contributed to the current housing market we are in, but a primary factor is the financialization and speculation of the housing market. Housing has become a speculative commodity or investment rather than a basic human need. Meaning everyday people who need a home to live are competing with wealthy multi-property owners and international investors who, unsurprisingly everyday people lose to, all the time. Luckily foreign buyers have been banned from buying homes, but only for 2 years (plus I imagine it is not that hard to set up a shell company in Canada to purchase said homes).
The housing purchased by investors then goes either unoccupied, representing nearly 9% of the houses in Canada (according to approximate data, could be higher or lower), or is rented out at the highest possible price. Prices that landlords purposely make as high as possible, which each landlord has distinct incentive to make as high as possible since there is no risk to losing customers based on high rent.
As the few who should be able to afford a home are priced out they move to renting, which obviously puts pressure on the rental market and raises the costs of rentals for everybody. Having middle income people move to renting would not be as much of a concern if Ontario had some level of affordable housing available for those at the bottom getting priced out. Ontario says “Affordable housing? I have never heard of this before.”.
Since the 90’s construction of affordable housing as essentially stalled, less than 10,000 (in Canada) affordable homes are being built every year, which is a complete failure. Keep in mind that affordable housing are homes that take up less than 30% of someone’s income.
The two issues I have brought up (Financialization of housing and lack of affordable housing) are only contributors in the overall problem. Housing and the market surrounding it is a complex issue that has developed over years of inaction and deregulation by the government. Other issues include the fetishization of single family homes and discriminatory mortgage markets. But according to the government of Ontario there is one simple problem, not enough houses baby.
The government in response to this issue has only explored one solution, build more homes, obviously. They have done this primarily through de-regulating development, speeding up development, and opening up conservation areas, wetlands, and areas such as the greenbelt for development. What has this done to help Ontarians? Absolutely nothing. The same landlords and investors are buying these houses and charging just as much. Why? Probably because the houses cost 700,000 to who fucking knows how much, which completely takes away a majority of possible home owners.
Per usual I have done plenty of complaining about the housing market and the issues surrounding it, but what are the solutions?
Honestly, I do not have the exact answers to this, I am just a caveman who can barely afford a cave to live in. I, like many of you reading this, am feeling the pinch of unaffordable housing across Ontario and North America alike. Will building more single family duplexes and triplexes help me or you like the government seems to think? I think you know the answer to this, more houses have been being built for years, and rental costs have been going up for years.
When the only people who can afford to build homes are rich people, then they are only going to build homes that benefit and can be bought by rich people, simple as that. Approaching housing from a top down approach via providing housing for the rich and hoping they will get out of the living spaces meant for low income people is just not going to work. In the meantime, the government continues to give developers sloppy toppy in the back room in the form of opening up what little green spaces we have left for homes that can only be bought by the wealthy.
For me, housing is not a commodity or an investment, it is essential to life. As long as landlords and investors continue to be able to dominate the housing market then housing will continue to be to expensive for those who truly need it.
This brings me to something I really want to emphasize and make clear for people reading this, landlord’s are capitalist scum who scrape every ounce of fucking profit from people when they are just trying to access something we all need to survive, shelter. They are no different from the corporate scum who run companies like Nestle who rake in profits by exploiting basic human needs. Now Nestle may destroy countless habitats and rapidly exploit the labor and land of many communities, but honestly would you put that past landlords? Landlords buy shelter and charge more for it, and Nestle buys water and charges more for it, not that different really.
Now not all landlords act like complete fucking tyrants, but there are also landlords who wouldn’t hesitate to kick out a family on Christmas Eve. Not to mention nearly every landlord I have interacted with discusses their tenants as if they were another species or something. Do you have no sympathy for someone who lost their job or is going through something that makes them unable to pay your artificially high rent? When you kick that person out you realize you have made them homeless, and when someone is homeless it is a 100 times harder to get and keep a job that could get you anywhere close to affording a living space?
Landlords may respond to this little rant of mine with a scoff and rebuttal consisting of ““How else will these people afford houses if I don’t buy them?” or “I lose money when renters don’t pay?” and my response is I do not give a fuck, you are making money by exploiting needs that every human has. Nothing is making you charge the highest possible rent you can, or buying your eighteenth house in order to up your portfolio other than greed and money. Sure we all have to make money within this capitalistic system, but you do have a choice to not exploit basic human needs.
Perhaps the only landlord I don’t think this about is those who simply rent out the unused space in their basement for a price that just covers their bills and makes their life a bit easier. Those landlords I dare say are even good, but beyond that fuck’em.
Some may call my criticism harsh, unreasonable, and just complaining, and yeah, you know what they may be fair criticism. I just find it difficult to not have such a harsh reaction to those preventing people, including children, mothers, and the elderly from having shelter.
As homelessness becomes increasingly more common and families continue to get crushed by inflation and the dominate discourse continues to villainize them as if they weren’t victims of the heinous behavior of politicians, CEO’s, and fucking landlords I can’t help continue to think “Naw landlords are cunts”.
My last wish’s I will get out there in this post is, please at least make it so renters have the same, if not more rights than landlords. Why can I not claim my rent in my tax’s (unless I use it for business) when landlords can claim their mortgage? Why the fuck do landlords have the ability to determine the rental market? Sure there is a rental increase cap, but in a 5 year period a landlord could easily increase rent by over 12% (well over 200 dollars) and my income will likely go up by less than 5% in that period especially if I stay in the same location.
Finally, just fund and build public housing and heavily regulate the housing market for fuck sakes, I know everything needs to be commodified in this fucked capitalist system we have, but like can housing please not be one of those?
Check out Strong Towns for a much better and less sour explanation of how we can fix development in North America.